Dr
Joanne Benford, the Open University creative writing tutor
exposed as having plagiarized a Dylan Thomas story and taken similar
liberties with Aleister Crowley and many others (Telegraph,
22 June), has also published genre-related nonfiction. According to Alex
Keegan, who's been on the case since learning Benford had appropriated
his story 'Postcards From BalloonLand', her Sing of the City
Electric – on postmodern architecture with extensive
references to Blade Runner – and Living Doll: The
Seduction of the Cyborg both contain much plagiarism, 100% in the
latter case: see his dossier at
alexkeegan.blogspot.co.uk.
Furthermore, Benford's Postmodern Feminist Fantasy overlaps or
is included in her Fanning the Flames, in which researchers are
reporting more and more pirated work, and whose content in turn overlaps
that of Living Doll. One Keegan correspondent asserts that the
first chapter of Benford's PhD thesis is 'largely stitched together'
from nine articles by others (one from Wired), mostly about
cyberspace, cyborgs or sf: 'It's an unsophisticated copy and paste job.'
[JS] Oh dearie me.

Mitchell
Gross, whose novels as by Mitchell Graham include a fantasy
trilogy, pleaded guilty to fraud (see
A292).
He's been sentenced to over 12 years in a US prison and ordered to pay
$5.8 million to his victims. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 28
June;
AthensPatch,
30 June)

Susan
Hill, author of many supernatural and psychological suspense
novels (including the recently filmed The Woman in Black) was
made a Commander of the British Empire in the Queen's birthday honours,
for services to literature.

Grant
Morrison, comics writer and playwright, was honoured with the
MBE for services to film and literature.

Michael
Swanwick wrote about the passing of Hope Mirrlees's nephew
Prince Robin Ian Evelyn Milne Stuart de La Lanne Mirrlees –
'almost certainly the highest-ranking noble ever to be published in NYRSF
[New York Review of SF]' – and repeated a favourite family
story: 'Robin Mirrlees' mother, Hope's sister-in-law Frances de La Lanne
Mirrlees, was a strikingly beautiful and of course aristocratic woman.
One of her many friends was Ian Fleming. Who one day told her that he
was writing a novel. / "Oh, Ian," she said. "Don't
write a novel. You haven't the brains for it."'. (Flogging
Babel, 26 June)

Jeff
Vandermeer was grumpy about New Yorker coverage of the
BookExpo America sf panel. Despite legendary NY fact-checking,
quotes were misattributed and Jeff was transmogrified into James
VanderMeer.

F.
Paul Wilson plunged Facebook into war by linking to a website
about the coming tv series The Fixer – based on Jon F.
Merz's urban fantasies – with the comment 'Let's rip off Jack,
shall we?' Merz disliked the insinuation that his 'Fixer' vampire hunter
was stolen from Wilson's 'Repairman Jack', and asked for a retraction
and apology, causing a loyal Wilson fan to denounce Merz as a pirate....
And so on, and on.

As
Others See GRRM. Here's how to say you like Game of
Thrones without being overly uncool: 'To anyone who wasn't
Hobbit-friendly previously, this genre – fantasy medieval –
is as sexy as pubic dandruff. Viewers like me, non-Dr Who types,
vehement Hobbit-knockers, fell for Game of Thrones sheerly by accident
and then fretted for their identity ever after. No sane person intends
to go down a path where Saturdays are spent changing from jeans to a
Dothraki pelt-skin costume in the back of a Ford Focus in a Milton
Keynes conference centre car-park before meeting their friend Nige (him
of the egg-box dragon costume and blow-torch mouth o' fire effect) but
cosplay has to start somewhere. Game of Thrones, and its ilk, have made
fancy-dress fools of wiser folk than us.' (Grace Dent,
Independent,
2 June) [MPJ]

R.I.P.Suzanne Allés (Sue) Blom (1948-2012), long-time Milwaukee
sf fan and author of the alternate-history novel Inca: The Scarlet
Fringe (2000) plus unpublished sequels, died on 23 June. [MJL]
 Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), who for Ansible
readers needs no introduction, died on 6 June at the age of 91 and was
widely mourned by everyone from the usual sf suspects through media
pundits to President Obama. Besides the landmark books The Martian
Chronicles (1950) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953, a 2004 Retro
Hugo winner), his legacy included a great many magical and/or macabre
short stories and a much-appreciated
1960s commercial
for prunes. Bradbury received the World Fantasy Award for life
achievement in 1977, the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1989, and entered
the SF Hall of Fame in 1999. One proposed memorial is the introduction
of web error 451, analogous to '404 Page Not Found' but denoting
censored content.
 Nora Ephron (1941-2012), US writer, screenwriter and
film-maker who wrote and directed the fantasy films Michael
(1996) and Bewitched (2005, reinventing the tv series), died on
26 June; she was 71. [SFS]
 Caroline John (1940-2012) UK actress fondly remembered
as Doctor Who companion Liz Shaw in the Jon Pertwee era
(reappearing in The Five Doctors and other specials), died on 5
June aged 71. [O] 'I met Caroline at a Dimensions convention in
Newcastle a few years back, where she revealed she used to refer to the
short skirts Liz Shaw wore as "pussy pelmets".' [MPJ]
 Richard Lynch (1936-2012), US actor whose many genre
credits (usually as villains) included the tv Battlestar Galactica,
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Star Trek: TNG, plus
the films Deathsport, Trancers II, Merlin, The
Mummy's Kiss, Halloween and (forthcoming) The Lords of
Salem, died on 18 June. He was 76. [SG]
 Anthony J. Wiener (1930-2012), US futurist who with
Herman Kahn wrote The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the
Next Thirty-Three Years (1967), died on 19 June aged 81. [PDF]
 Peter Wragg (1948-2012), UK visual effects designer who
created the Red Dwarf spaceship (also Starbug and Kryten's
head), died on 15 April aged 65. Other sf work included Thunderbirds,
Captain Scarlet and Doctor Who. [MPJ]
 Jim Young (1951-2012), US fan (once very active in
Minneapolis fandom), former diplomat and author of the sf novels The
Face of the Deep (1979) and Armed Memory (1995), died on 12
June. He'd recently been focusing on his acting career, and played
Hitler in Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012).
 Matt Yuricich (1923-2012) Croatian-born US visual
effects artist who won an Oscar for work on Logan's Run and was
shortlisted for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade
Runner, died on 28 May aged 89. His many film credits also included
Young Frankenstein, Planet of the Apes and Ghostbusters.
[MPJ]
 Late notice:J.T. McIntosh (James Murdoch
MacGregor, 1925-2008), Scots author – very popular in his day
– whose first sf novel was World Out of Mind (1953), died
in 2008. [IC] He ceased publishing after A Planet Called Utopia
(1979).

As
Others Lump Us. 'But as Amazon's six other publishing imprints
[...] have discovered, in certain genres (romance, science fiction and
fantasy) formerly relegated to the moribund mass-market paperback,
readers care not a whit about cover design or even good writing, and
have no attachment at all to the book as object. Like addicts, they just
want their fix at the lowest possible price, and Amazon is happy to be
their online dealer.' (The Nation, 18 June) [JC]

As
Others See Us: The Last Resort. A sales pitch from The Writing
School at Oxford Open Learning: 'There are many different kinds of novel
and part of the challenge is to find the kind of novel which you will
enjoy writing and your audience will enjoy reading. Whether it is a
thriller, a romance, conmedy [sic], historical fiction, a
whodunit or even science fiction, we will give you the technical skills
to express your vision effectively ...' (writingschool.co.uk) [TE]

Outraged
Letters.Claire M. Jordan on Simon R. Green's
A299 letter:
'Shatner didn't just show up on Have I Got News for You –
he was, or certainly appeared to be, as drunk as a skunk. The funniest
bit was when he made some racy joke about Angela Merkel being a lesbian
and then waved his hand expansively and said it would be cut out before
the show went to air, and one of the others said "You haven't
watched this show, have you?" ... He wasn't incapable, you
understand – but sort of fuzzy and slurred, and suspiciously red
in the face.' Later he issued an apology for his mysterious impromptu
quip about Ilfracombe, Devon: 'The place is laced with prostitution.' (BBC,
20 June) [JD]

MTV
Awards (film). Twilight: Breaking Dawn 1 was overall
winner; The Hunger Games won for best male and female
performances, fight scene and 'transformation' (four wins in all); Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 collected two awards, for best hero
and cast. [MPJ]

As
Others See Ray Bradbury. He 'wrote modern myths, not science
fiction [...] Bradbury was not that popular among science fiction fans.
He was not geeky enough.' (Telegraph, 6 June) [MPJ]
 'Bradbury wasn't so much a major science fiction writer. He was
a major writer who specialized in science fiction.' (Boston Globe,
1 July) [DK]

Random
Fandom.Ted Ball of the late lamented Fantasy Centre
is recovering from a recentish heart attack.
 Stu Shiffman, ace fanartist, had a stroke on 16 June.
After two brain operations and one on his kneecap (broken in a hospital
fall) he's doing well. All good wishes to Stu and his partner Andi
Shechter, who's issuing regular bulletins.

The
Dead Past.50 Years Ago, we became respectable: 'Gone,
it appears, are the days when fans tore off prozine covers so that they
could read their purchases in the tube, when convention reports in
newspapers began "If you see an alien monster walking down the
street next Saturday," when your colleagues told you they had once
read Jules Verne at school. For SF has now attained the ultimate status
symbol. TV, after delving condescendingly with the genre for so many
years, has finally gone overboard for science fiction. My, I bet you're
proud.' Thus Ron Bennett on the BBC serials The Big Pull (gosh,
I remember that) and Andromeda Breakthrough, plus ITV's
Out of This World anthology series: 'Well, it makes a change
from Z Cars.' (Skyrack
44, 2 July 1962)

As
Others ... 'The usual move in science fiction is to remain
vague about the dates, so as to render "the future" a zone of
pure fantasy, no different than Middle Earth or Narnia, or like Star
Wars "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." As a
result, our science fiction future is, most often, not a future at all,
but more like an alternative America, a dream-time, a technological
Elsewhere, existing in days to come the same way elves and
dragon-slayers existed in the past – another screen for the
displacement of moral dramas and mythic fantasies in to the dead ends of
consumer pleasure.' (The Baffler, December 2011) [MMW]

Fanfundery.DUFF: 'Hold Over Funds' was a clear first-round winner with 57
votes (38 NA+19 Australasia) to 25 (24+1) for Juanita Coulson and 13
(11+2) for Murray Moore. This wasn't a vote against the candidates but
against the scheduling which made it impossible for a US winner to
attend New Zealand's national con (already in progress during the count)
and nearly so for Australia's on the next weekend.

Thog's
Masterclass.Literal Dept. 'She literally flowed with
stories and spunk.' (Brad Torgersen, 'Outbound', Analog 11/2010)
[NW]
 Eyeballs in the Sky. 'Her eyes felt lost and confused
...' (James Rollins, Sandstorm, 2004) [MCN]
 'Her eyes were like a condor's, or some worse star-spawned bird
of prey, crimson edged and bleeding into blank holes at the center that
seemed to be pinpoint windows into her diseased soul. Kullervo thought
he saw things crawling around behind those windows.' (Emil
Petaja, Tramontane, 1967)
 Special 300th-Issue Technothriller Bons Mots Dept. 'He
knew that he ought to have prepared his speech better ... but the
tension within his intestine had proved too much.'
 'In the two weeks since Helena's note had arrived he had stopped
sleeping and begun waking in dreams.'
 '... the door opened to find their quarry at his elbows on the
desk, his face enveloping his hands.'
 'Hartmann too smiled but it was not a creature of grace; it
skitted, like a new-born faun and, in similar fashion, fell down
completely before another second had died.'
 'He swallowed and smiled at the same time; perhaps, he at once
realized, a mistake.'
 'The smell of cigarette smoke suffused directly into his stomach
lining and into his strobing brain.'
 '... the telephone call from the Coroner had also caused a
distinct rise in his anal sphincter tone ...'
 'That Eisenmenger found the look on her face odd would be
untrue; he found it worrying. She looked as if she had appendicitis.'
 'Which made the slap when it came all the more unexpected and
all the more painful. It rang in his ears and made the mast cells in his
skin explode with unpleasant substances.'
 'Eisenmenger could feel the atmosphere [between the two
women] beginning to reek with noxious gases.'
 'Through the pain she tried to ignore the nihilism of the
thought, finding it seditionist.'
 'Where do you put a virus?'
 'She knew more about the inside of a Turkish wrestler's
underpants than she did about virology ...'
 'She bent down again, profaned against her back, and pulled.'
 'He picked up his coat from the back of the sofa and moved to
the door, feeling distinctly like an ambulant and green soft fruit.'
(all Keith McCarthy, The Silent Sleep of the Dying, 2004) [PB]

Clarke
Award Redux. 'The 2012 winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award
[...] is Rhianna White – the first female winner. The monolith
trophy, together with a certificate, a copy of an Arthur C. Clarke book,
and a cheque from the Foundation, were presented ...' Before the
outraged letters pour in from Pat Cadigan, Pat Cadigan and other past
Clarke winners of a ladylike persuasion: this is the other
Clarke Award, for science achievement at Huish College, Taunton, where
ACC studied as a teenager in the 1930s. This, indeed, is the Clarke
Award that's still funded by the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. (www.clarkefoundation.org)
[MT]

Outraged
Letters II. Relaxing the stern Ansible rule of
omitting mere egoboo, here's a selection from the 'Gosh, isn't 300 a
shiny round number' postbag.
 R.I. Barycz, as is his wont, sends a longish handwritten
letter of which parts elude my still-dodgy eyesight. After a round-up of
comparable 2012 events like the Titanic centenary, the Queen's
Jubilee, the London Olympics and the end of the world: 'I look forward
to A300 (and even more to A301, 302, 303
... to infinity and beyond!). Even though there is a certain melancholia
to your R.I.P. section. Not so much that people die in alphabetical
order, but now I notice more and more of them are younger than what I
am. Oh my. Fans die both young and fair / Brightness falls from the air
/ I must write that novel, now or nevair ...'
 Bob Blanchett: 'Delighted you've hit 300! I hope Thog's
Jubilee barge (with operating replica Roman Catapult) was an accurate
success.'
 John Dallman: 'Throughout its run, it has been essential
reading. The rows of Hugos do convey some of this, but by no means all.'
 Margaret Hoyt hoped, in vain, 'that Ansible 300
will be an all-singing, all-dancing, all-Technicolor (or something like
that) issue.'
 Meccarello [at] gmail: 'I'm not the first I imagine. 300
issues are quite the achievement. Congratulations.'
 Murray MacLachlan: 'Congrats on 300! You have always
been a gracious and hospitable correspondent, and I've always felt that
the fan lounge that is Ansible is dressed in the colours and
style of the Langford's reception room. Thank you for inviting so many
people in.'
 Lloyd Penney: 'Whether or not the 300th issue is a
bumper e-pub or not, congratulations on hitting that impressive number.
Few zines of any kind can brag about that number.' (Ah, but
The Drink Tank
passed that particular hurdle in 2011 despite having started 26 years
later.)
 Andrew Stephenson: 'I'm waiting for A380:
biggest ever; amazing range; engines that occasionally catch fire; and
more levels than you can shake an innuendo at. [Regarding Terry
Pratchett's renamed Gloucester Old Spot:] Considering what
eventually happens to your average domesticated pig, I'd say "Snuff"
is a smartly apt name. / I've just figured out these awards you keep
mentioning. All one has to do is, write a story/novel/collection or
maybe a blog and they give you money (maybe) and a chunk of ugly art.
Sometimes they name an animal. Over the years I have named several cats,
which is okay, but the other stuff sounds really cool. Would a note to
the milkman be enough, you think?'
 Alexander Yudenitsch shows arcane powers of
precognition: 'Well, I'd really like having a "special bumper #300
issue", but something tells me it won't really happen (and NOT
because I haven't prepared any contribution – besides, past
efforts have proved that such things are usually met with a resounding
silence, so I doubt anyone will miss it), but I'd like to at least let
you know, once more, how important Ansible has been (and is) for
me, and wish you both the best, now and forever!'
 Many thanks to all. For the sake of sanity I'm not even thinking
about numbers like 400.

Thog
Gets Fan Mail.Margaret Hoyt put in a request for 'a
pinup of dear Thog sometime in the future.' The only known likeness of
Thog the Mighty is Peter Andrew Jones's cover painting for The Book of
the Magnakai (1992) by Joe Dever and John Grant. Although Ansible
doesn't have a centrefold, Mr Grant kindly obliged with a scan –
now added to Thog.org for your viewing pleasure:http://thog.org/cover.html